Chinese tourists are playing a vital role in helping Australia hit its 2020 tourism targets, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Wednesday.

Turnbull commended the sector for welcoming a record number of tourists in 2015-16 while speaking at the 16th Annual Tourism and Transport Forum Leadership Summit.

“Just this month, the ABS released some figures which showed that we have, for the first time, welcomed more than 8 million international visitors to Australia over the last year,” he said.

“That comes just 18 months after we passed 7 million annual visitors. Before that, it took more than six years for visitor numbers to climb from 5 to 6 million.”

Turnbull attributed the ever-growing number of Chinese tourists for the sector’s success.

“We know that tourism builds personal links to our country and it encourages further trade and investment. Chinese visitors, for example, are more likely to buy Australian products and services after visiting,” Turnbull told the forum.

“When I have been down in Tasmania, which has really benefited from the China export story, again and again I met people running family businesses who would say that the order they got had come because Chinese tourists had visited, had sampled it and gone home and said ‘Gosh, maybe we can share this with some of our friends and customers in China’.”

Turnbull said it was crucial over the next few years to entice more Chinese tourists, particularly after both countries agree 2017 would be the “Australia-China Year of Tourism.”